


we're not so starry-eyed anymore

by keptein



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Aromantic Character, Aromantic Riza Hawkeye, F/M, Queerplatonic Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2570729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keptein/pseuds/keptein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Good on you,” Olivier Armstrong says, over coffee. “Don’t marry. Especially not Mustang.”<br/>“Is he not -?” Riza asks, out of some morbid fascination.<br/>Olivier waves a hand. “He’s good in bed, but he’s not marriage material.”<br/>“Truth be told,” Riza says, “I think I’m the one who’s not marriage material.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're not so starry-eyed anymore

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from "make you better" by the decemberists. if you want to listen to something while reading, i recommend that song and "silver lining" by rilo kiley.
> 
> this fic features aromantic riza hawkeye, but she doesn't have the vocabulary to speak of it - nor of a queerplatonic relationship, which is why neither of those words feature in this fic. i have tried to convey their meaning anyway. (this is also why i was hesitant to tag this "unrequited love", but it is, strictly speaking, unrequited.) i am unsure whether i am on the aromantic spectrum myself, but if anyone feels like aromanticism is in any way misrepresented, please tell me. lastly, thanks to [kastron](http://queermustang.tumblr.com) for betaing!

i.

“The General and the Captain - there’s something there, isn’t there?”

They’re at a gala. Riza doesn’t know who whispers behind her back. It doesn’t matter.

“I don’t know,” the other one replies. “There has to be, though, right?”

They giggle behind polite hands. Riza breathes in, breathes out.

Roy is off to the side. He hasn’t heard them. She is glad - she won’t have to deal with it today. She won’t have to deal with his _maybe we should_ -. She won’t have to say no when he asks her to dance.

The gala is bright. Lights twinkle overhead, and there are whispers about the General and his Captain.

It doesn’t matter.

ii.

“Listen, Mustang, we’re all worried, you’ve not been seen with a girl in _months,”_ Havoc says, twirling a cigarette between his fingers.

Roy brushes it off. “I’m busy,” he says. “As are we all. Or are you dissatisfied with your workload, Lieutenant?”

“No, no!” Havoc says immediately, holding his hands up. “You just used to make time for all the girls, is all. I just wanted you to know that slumps are perfectly natural -”

“There is no _slump,”_ Roy says. His eyes are narrowed. “I am merely too busy for the dalliances of my youth.”

“Alright, alright,” Havoc says. “Shoot a man for caring, will you?”

“Lieutenant,” Riza warns, and he quiets down. “Go back to work.”

Roy shoots her a grateful look, and she looks down at her own paperwork. She doesn’t want Havoc to poke his noise into Roy’s business - she doesn’t want to hear what advice Havoc might have, if he saw his own superior pining.

Theirs is not a pretty story. It won’t have the happy ending Roy wants.

iii.

Of course, there are times when Riza considers it. It would certainly make her life easier - there would be no comments at galas, no sneaking insinuations about what she might do for a promotion. Mrs. Riza Mustang would have to retire, but it wouldn’t be so bad, to have time to herself again. To spend more time with Black Hayate.

But Roy wouldn’t see it so simply - he would think it was something more, something Riza doesn’t want to give, something she doesn’t know if she _can_ give. And she wants to spare them both of that.

iv.

(“Good on you,” Olivier Armstrong says, over coffee. “Don’t marry. Especially not Mustang.”

“Is he not -?” Riza asks, out of some morbid fascination.

Olivier waves a hand. “He’s good in bed, but he’s not marriage material.”

“Truth be told,” Riza says, “I think I’m the one who’s not marriage material.”)

v.

Years pass in their odd stalemate - long stretches of time where Roy doesn’t have time for anything other than the impending Fuhrership, where there is only them and the job they have to do; the Amestris they want to build. Riza is his queen, his rock, and she does what he asks of her. She still believes in him fiercely.

Those are good years, when she sees Roy flourish under pressure, their victories exhilarating and their losses few.

Then it calms down, and the questions start back up.

(“The Fuhrer and his Major -”)

“Isn’t it it time you found a wife?” one of the Generals asks.

Roy laughs. “Amestris keeps me far too busy to keep another woman in my life content.”

“You’re doing well with the Major,” the General says, eyebrows raised.

Riza excuses herself.

vi.

Amestris wants a loving Fuhrer, so Roy tries. He finds refined women, women who have aged like fine wine - he ends up in Olivier’s bed a few more times, but Riza turns a blind eye out of love for them both.

Then comes Margaret. Margaret is an artiste, an opera singer, and her laugh is as booming as her arias. Roy adores her immediately, and he dotes on her to an almost embarrassing degree.

(Riza learns to be fond of the opera.)

They move in together, and Margaret surprises them all by staying, not chased away by Roy’s eccentricities or his nightmares.

Riza breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe - finally - this is the end.

vii.

It’s a mild day, and Riza enters Roy’s house without knocking. The Fuhrer couple is set for a vacation to Xing, but Havoc called her and said he wasn’t going to go into the house, and he needed her back-up, stat.

Neither Margaret nor Roy hear her enter, both too caught up in their shouting match, and Riza is just wondering how to interrupt when she hears them.

“I’m trying to do something _nice,_ because I want _this to last, unlike you!”_ Roy’s baritone is almost deafened by Margaret’s powerful response.

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Roy Mustang!” Riza can just see her around the corner, and she is shaking. “I’ve been trying and trying, not with spontaneous trips to Xing but _every day,_ while you waste your days loving someone who’s never going to love you back!”

Riza leaves.

“I can’t go in there,” she tells Havoc on the way out. “Send someone - anyone else, I can’t go in there -”

“Okay,” Havoc says, looking a little stunned. “Jeez, is it that bad?”

Riza presses her lips together, shakes her head. “I can’t go in there,” she says again, and leaves him to it.

viii.

Margaret and Roy don’t go to Xing. Roy shows up at Riza’s doorstep hours after it’s turned dark, the stink of alcohol so foul that Black Hayate starts barking. Riza can see the lights of the car idling outside.

“We had a fight,” Roy says miserably.

Riza looks at him. She sighs. “Come in.”

Roy stumbles inside and falls on the couch, hitting his arm on the armrest and swearing quietly. Riza tells Black Hayate to watch over him. She goes outside to tell the Fuhrer’s body guards that he will sleep it off in her guest room, and they can consider themselves done for the night. They leave.

No one doubts Riza Hawkeye’s ability to protect the Fuhrer.

“We had a fight,” Roy says again when she enters.

“So you said.” She gets him a glass of water that he drinks automatically, dark eyes dull.

“I care about her a lot,” Roy says. Riza knows he isn't lying. “I love her.” He sighs, loud and long.

“The whole country can see that,” Riza says.

“Then why can’t _she?”_ Roy scrubs a hand over his face. “So much work ... sometimes I wonder.”

 _Don’t,_ Riza thinks. She stands up to refill his water, trying desperately to delay this conversation. Roy is staring at his hand when she returns, flexing his fingers.

“Do you ever think about -” Roy starts.

“No,” Riza says. Blunt, because Roy is drunk, and because she needs him to understand this, once and for all.

(No one doubts Riza Hawkeye’s ability to protect the Fuhrer - even from himself.)

“I do,” he says, and his voice is low.

“I know,” Riza says. “I don’t want you to talk to me about it.”

“But I _love_ you!” His drunken lethargy bursts into frenzied motion as he sits up, spilling water down his shirt and onto the sofa. His eyes are wet as he stares at her, silently willing her to understand - he is asking her to compromise, even though he doesn’t realize it.

“Sir,” Riza says, and she knows that was the wrong word by the way Roy’s face breaks, by the stillness that takes over his figure. “I can’t fullfil that role for you.”

“You were supposed to be _everything,”_ he says. “You were… you were supposed to be everything.”

Riza feels so heavy. The weight of this is crushing her. “I don’t want to be,” she says helplessly. “Roy, I don’t want to.”

For a moment she’s afraid he will move towards her - but he falls backward into the sofa again, slinging an arm across his eyes to shield them from view.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally.

“I care about you,” she says, because she wants to offer him something, because she knows she’d offer herself piece by piece to him if he actually asked her, knows they’ve both done that for years.

“Then _why_ -?” His voice breaks on the word.

Riza takes a deep breath, lets it out again. There are no words for how she feels, how she knows Roy in the role of anything other than a friend and a commanding officer would dig under her skin and fester, ruining everything they’ve devoted their life to. “You’re my friend,” she says.

She wishes she would stop crying. Black Hayate is looking between them with big, worried eyes: two of the most important people in all of Amestris quietly breaking down, the line between them threaded, worn and pulled taut. Close to breaking.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I’m so sorry.”

Roy doesn’t say anything.

After a long while, Riza wipes her eyes for the final time. There are soft breaths coming from the sofa, but the Fuhrer can’t sleep in someone’s living room, and Riza helps him into the guest room. He holds onto her when she pulls away, and she lets herself have this one hug, tries to forget about the desperate clench of his hands around her waist.

This time, when she pulls away, he doesn’t reach for her at all.

ix.

Riza keeps her distance after that. She needs time to close herself back up, needs a moment’s respite from the intensity of it all. It feels heavier and lighter at the same time - she misses Roy like she would a limb, but it’s also immensely freeing not to have to check her every move for double meanings, make sure that she can’t be misinterpreted.

Margaret stays, but Riza doesn’t know how much she knows. The others express their concerns in increasingly clear terms until they’re flat-out asking. She doesn’t know what Roy tells them, but she tells them that she’s fine, that they’re fine.

She doesn’t think she’s lying. This was a sleeping dragon just waiting to be poked, but they’ve defeated dragons before. They can do it again.

“Major Hawkeye,” her assistant says one day, “the Fuhrer has requested that you join him for lunch. He says he apologizes for the delay.”

“Very well,” says Riza, and smiles.

x.

Riza and Roy stand on the balcony in his office, looking out at Amestris. The sky is blue overhead, and the gardens are green, pink and orange flowers dotting the landscape. In the streets, busy people go about their day, restaurants quickly filling up as the lunch rush hits.

“I wanted to apologize,” Roy says. His uniform is impeccable, and with the sun behind him, he looks invincible. There are grey strands in his hair.

“Thank you, sir,” Riza says.

“Riza, please,” he says, and grins at her - the same impish grin she remembers from so long ago, practically unchanged.

She smiles back.

“I want to explain,” he says, his smooth voice dropping lower as he looks back out over the city. “Not make any excuses, just - explain. I always thought it would end up being the two of us.”

“Roy, you don’t -” she tries, but he raises a hand.

“Let me finish. I was lazy, I took you for granted, and I did us both a disservice.” Roy clears his throat, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “Riza Hawkeye, you’re the best friend I have ever had. I hope we can stay that way until we’re both dust.”

“You needn’t ask,” Riza says, and they stand shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart. Overhead, birds fly - first one, then two, then a flock of them.

**Author's Note:**

> if aro riza is your jam at all (and i really hope it is) - come talk to me at [asexualtobio](http://asexualtobio.tumblr.com) on tumblr!


End file.
